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Junior is nine years old and has stubbornly curly hair. He wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, like a fashionable pop singer with long, ironed hair. This puts him at odds with his mother Marta, a young, unemployed widow. Already overwhelmed by what it takes to survive in the chaotic city of Caracas, Marta finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate Junior’s fixation with his looks. The more Junior tries to look sharp and make his mother love him, the more she rejects him, until he is cornered, face to face with a painful decision.

Junior is nine years old and has stubbornly curly hair. He wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, like a fashionable pop singer with long, ironed hair. This puts him at odds with his mother Marta, a young, unemployed widow. Already overwhelmed by what it takes to survive in the chaotic city of Caracas, Marta finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate Junior’s fixation with his looks. The more Junior tries to look sharp and make his mother love him, the more she rejects him, until he is cornered, face to face with a painful decision.

The search for identity. Cultures crossing continents. In Nikkei, director Kaori Flores Yonekura tells the story of her grandparents’ intrepid journey from Japan to Peru to Venezuela. Along the way, their personal search for a new home is set against the larger backdrop of the history of Japanese immigration to Latin America: from servitude in Peru, to the anti-Japanese media campaigns in World War II, to propaganda and promises of a better life in Venezuela.

Cuba 1993: eunice, no longer able to tolerate her father’s abuse, flees her small town. She falls in with the “freakies,” a gang of hard-living street kids, who embrace her as one of their own. However, eunice once again finds herself at a crossroads when the group finds out that the local AIDS facility offers food, clothing, and shelter, and they decide they want in—whatever the cost. Boleto al paraíso presents a harsh and highly compelling chronicle of disaffected youth culture in Cuba.